Performance assessment of the RANS turbulence models in nuclear fuel rod bundles

The three experiments for turbulent flow in a rod bundle geometry were simulated in this CFD analysis using various RANS models. The CFD predictions were compared with the experimental and DNS results. The RANS models used here are the nonlinear quadratic/cubic κ-ε models and the second-order closure models (SSG, LRR, RSM-ω). The anisotropic models predicted the secondary flow and showed a significantly improved agreement with the measurements from the standard κ-ε model. In particular, the SSG model resulted in the best performance showing the closest agreement with the experimental results. However, the RANS models could not predict the very high anisotropy observed in a rod bundle with a small pitch-to-diameter ratio